Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

László Dányi: Universal implications of William Styton's Southern Heritage

17 wife, was basically ill-at-ease in this illicit ambience, even while asleep. DARK DOOM! DARK DOOM! pealed the wretched bell."

5 For the South, "defeat" has special overtones. Southerners live among defeated grandfathers. The shattered economy, the Civil War and the exploitation of white and black relations have connected the South with defeat from which there is no escape except in death or in the world of unreality. "From the Golden dreams of the Roanoke adventurers to the fantasies of a Tennessee Williams heroine, the South has always preserved a certain element of moonstruck unreality in its outlook, has more than any other part of the country convinced itself that the best things in life are not those which are but those which ought to be or which once were supposed to have been,"^

1 At first glance Styron's novels, especially LDD, seems to fit perfectly into the Southern literary mode. The Loftises in LDD are the inhabitants of Port Warwick but not in the way that the Compsons are the inhabitants of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha Country. In LDD Styron possessed the traditional Southern attitudes, but in his later novels he proceeded with an examination of the terms by which Southern attitudes can survive and flourish in modern times. He examined how Southern heroes can live and cherish and create. 2/ The Quest Motif The Southern protagonist had an unshaken belief in his unity with Southern civilization and he had no doubt about who belonged to the South and who did not. The Southern writer had a strong sense of belonging to a homogeneous region , he had a strong sense of "locale", and he felt that the South, with its organized system of values, was superior to the North. Northern culture was also regarded as something inferior. Attachment to a place gives an abiding identity because places associated with family, community, and history have depth. Philosopher Yi-Fu Tuan points out that a sense of place in any human society comes from the intersection of space and time. Southerners developed an acute sense of place as a result of their dramatic and traumatic history and their rural isolation on the land for generations. As Welty noted, 'feelings are bound up with place', and the film title "Places in the Heart" captured the emotional quality that places evoke. 'Home' is a potent word for southerners, and the 'homeplace' evokes reverence."^ The decline of the South and the dominance of the urban North led to the detachment of Southern values and to the loss of common awareness. And this is why the Southern protagonist begins his quest for regaining balance. Earlier, the Southern writer always knew himself as being part of history and the South, but this direct contact was interrupted. In Styron's concept we can find America